Surname naming conventions around the world

Surname naming conventions around the world can vary quite a lot from place to place and have also had very different evolutions over time, but there is also a striking amount of commonalities in terms of how surnames have developed within different cultures and regions. In some cases we find that similar methodologies have developed in terms of surname construction in cultures on different sides of the world with no contact with one another. As such, they developed along similar lines without being influenced by other cultures, indicating that they is some universality to how surname conventions develop and it is not dependent on cultural osmosis. This is, for instance, the case when it comes to the development of surnames which indicate a lineal line of descent, a very common type of surname convention. However, other surname conventions can be region, culture and language specific.  

The earliest surnames in history

Shang Dynasty China

The history of surnames is complex. There are many cultures and ethnic groups in the world today that have only had surnames for a few decades or somewhere between one and two-hundred years, only adopting them as they were effectively forced to do so by western-style, centralizing states. In a few parts of the world, such as amongst a small number of Amazonian tribes in Brazil or some of the tribespeople of Papua New Guinea, surnames are still not in use.

However, most cultures have surnames, though they certainly are not as old as civilization itself. Instead the earliest surnames do not appear to have emerged until the second millennium BCE in China during the Shang Dynasty era. They were not common further west in the great early centers of civilization around the Indus River Valley, Mesopotamia or Egypt, and they continued to be quite rare in most parts of Eurasia until the Romans spread the concept of them around the Mediterranean world in the late first millennium BCE.

The influence of European naming conventions

Any assessment of how surname naming conventions have evolved around the world has to pay close attention to the evolution of European surname naming conventions, as these have had an outsized impact globally. Surnames had been widely used in Southern Europe as early as the first millennium BCE when Roman surnames, three-barrel constructs based on patrilineal lines of descent and acknowledgment of a person’s wider gens or clan, proliferated around the Mediterranean. However, the use of surnames largely died out across Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century CE.

Proto-surnames began to develop again in medieval Europe from as early as the sixth century as the new Germanic peoples of the continent began using descriptors to indicate where someone was from or some element of their personality or appearance. Anglo-Saxon surnames are a good example of this. Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries this evolved in countries like France, England, Italy and Spain into recognizably modern surnames. These followed familiar patterns. Some were patronymic surnames used to indicate a famous ancestor. Examples include Dutch and German surnames that begin with ‘von’ or ‘van’. Others were occupational surnames such as Smith or Cooper to indicate an individual was a blacksmith or barrel-maker, while others still were descriptor surnames such as Russo or Rossi in Italy to describe someone with a red beard or hair.

Over the centuries that followed virtually everyone across Europe acquired surnames. Eventually this would have a huge bearing in other parts of the world, specifically ones which were colonized by European states between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and where there was no native tradition of using surnames. In the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries the new western powers in these countries often forced the natives to adopt surnames so that they could be registered as subjects of the country, whether it was to vote, receive social services or so that the government could tax them. Hence, European surname naming conventions were adopted by a wide range of native groups, from the Inuits of Canada to the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Line of descent: A common surname naming convention

The most common surname naming convention around the world is to produce surnames which indicate a line of descent from an esteemed ancestor believed to have founded the family line. Generally these will record a patrilineal line of descent and are patronymic surnames, especially so in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. However, there are some societies where the surname naming convention is to record a matrilineal line of descent. These matronymic surnames are primarily found in Asia in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and some parts of India. Clear examples of these lines of descent surnames are patronymics like Hansen and Johansen in the Norse tradition, i.e. ‘son of Hans’ and ‘son of Johan’.

A great proportion of these will be religiously based. Thus, when one comes across a name like Johnson in England, one is looking at a surname which means ‘son of John’, with John having become such a common personal name in the Christian world owing to the centrality of John of Baptist to the New Testament. Similarly, in the Muslim world, common patronymic surnames are ‘ibn Muhammad’ and ‘ibn Ali’, as so many men have personal names like that of the prophet of Islam (Muhammad) and the son-in-law of the prophet (Ali).

Other common surname naming conventions

Beyond patronymic surnames, it is common to find that people acquired their surnames based either on their profession, where they were from or some physical characteristic they had. We might call these occupational, toponymic and descriptor surnames.

Smith (from blacksmith), is an occupational surname

Examples of occupational surnames are Smith (an ancestor was a blacksmith or ironsmith), Miller (an ancestor ran a flour mill or was a miller of some other kind), Bisset (an ancestor was a weaver), Schumacher (an ancestor was a shoe-maker) and Escudero (an ancestor was a knight).

Examples of toponymic surnames are Almeida (a Portuguese surname, though one derived from Arabic and referring to ‘the table’, meaning an ancestor came from a plateau-like region), Deschamps (a French surname indicating an ancestor came ‘from the field’) and Van Eyck (a Dutch surname indicating an ancestor was ‘from oak’, meaning they came from a forested region).

Examples of descriptor surnames are Greco (an Italian surname used to indicate that someone was perceived as being from Greece or having an affinity for Greek culture), Leblanc (a French surname indicating an ancestor had whitish or blonde hair) and Schwartz (a German surname indicating an ancestor was perceived as having a particularly swarthy complexion or had dark brown or black hair).

The above examples are from the European tradition, but similar examples can be found in other cultures.

Irregular and unusual naming conventions

Erik the Red

There are, of course, irregular surname naming conventions in various parts of the world. For example, one of the things which is most peculiar about European surnames is the degree to which surnames emerged in the late medieval period that described people who had red beards or hair. We find this in a great many regions of the continent. Erik the Red, the legendary Norse explorer who discovered Greenland in the late tenth century was noted for his red hair. Rossi, meaning red, is the most common Italian surname today, while as far east as Ukraine we find surnames such as Rudenko which are further examples of this late medieval fascination with red hair and beards.

This is just one example of irregular naming conventions. Others include surnames which describe the personality of an individual. Consider Maldonado in Spanish, a surname which transliterates as ‘ill-favored’. Bellagamba in Italian means ‘beautiful leg’. Bierhals in German transliterates to ‘beer throat’ and presumably alludes to an ancestor being a heavy drinker. The list goes on. But perhaps these things are not so strange. In the early twenty-first century, as the Digital Age leads to a breakdown of all manner of traditional values, names are being legally adopted by people that include numbers and make no rational sense, so naming conventions have always strayed into unusual territory, both in the past and today.

See also

• American surnames
• Jewish surnames
• German surnames
• British surnames
• Irish surnames
• French surnames
• Arabic surnames
• Chinese surnames
• Indian surnames

Explore more about surname naming conventions

• Surname Origins – Why? When? Why then? at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• What's in a Surname: The History of Surnames and How They Help in Family History Research at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Surname Slip-Ups: Baffling Beginnings at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Google Search Strategies for Common Surnames at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Searching for Surnames: Challenges, Pitfalls and the Downright Ridiculous at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Following a Surname Around the World: Tracing Emigrants and Immigrants at Legacy Family Tree Webinars

References

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